This prompt is clear; distracted by paperwork & taxes this month, to the exclusion of music & writing. Think I’ll pick another month for poems next year, like Haiku March.

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#8 Physalia Love

How can I forget? The day we met, all signs
faded in the hot Gulf sun, Peligroso!’s letters dissolved in
the venomous glow. I swam to you, as you surrounded
me, enrapt the moment we touched, my legs & arms made
numb with sensations I’d never felt before they left,
leaving just below the surface of mirth & warmth,
just you & me in this chocolate sea.

Oh how many ways you held me! If
I could count them all, sweet Siphonophore,
opals embedding in tiny tentacles, dangled light to my skin, just
below your majestic sail, that glistening iridescent mast, that
veil submerged- just once, in our sea-green water waltz.

And how you tethered one to many- eloquently, as I swam
through, you- so selflessly giving all, each colony, its own treasured
jewel, each a dance of give & take, all held afloat by one
well-healed hunger, one desire to feed, to move, to gather in tryst
over & over held, then burned in your nematocyst kiss.

Prompt: a poet friend and I challenged each other to retell a terrible life experience, something we couldn’t forget; cast in a positive poetic light. Mine was a run-in with a Portuguese Man-of-War when swimming in the Gulf of Mexico years ago. It was awful; I went into shock and had to be hospitalized. My second degree burns taught me (as a budding then marine biologist), that there are at least 3 types of tentacles on Physalia physalis, each specialized for defense and feeding, each inflicting a different type of wound to hapless prey. The best thing about that experience was that I learned to play drums in the 30 days that I could not sleep, due to the steroid treatments from the burns. Drums became my heart instrument for the next 20 years, ironically. I suppose that should be another poem for the Muses. What did not kill me, made me musical. Haha! 😉